


Instead

by beckett77



Category: Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)
Genre: Canon - Movie, Extended Scene, F/M, Implied Incest, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-27
Updated: 2013-01-27
Packaged: 2017-11-27 01:33:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/656548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beckett77/pseuds/beckett77
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rewrite Movie Scene: In which Hansel, not Edward, saved Gretel</p>
            </blockquote>





	Instead

**Author's Note:**

> So I wish I could find it in myself to be sorry about shipping this, but I really can't. 
> 
> Please be warned that since this is a movie scene rewrite, it is a little spoilery by nature. Oh, also, may be a little gory at some parts. Nothing worse than in the movie, but thought you might like to know.
> 
> Tuuuurrrnnn back before it's too late if you haven't seen the movie.

### 

If Hansel had found Gretel instead of Edward:

The red-head from the village, Mina, was very attractive, no doubt about that. Hansel liked the soft turn of her mouth and the quiet way she moved. Nothing worse than a dumbass stomping around snapping twigs underfoot; really, that was just asking for death in Witch Country. But no matter how great Mina’s woodcraft, he didn’t have time for her magical waters horseshit. Gretel. Where was she?

Mina gave Hansel another over-the-shoulder look, and started unfastening her dress. “I’ll go in with you,” she said in her lilting way. “You won’t drown.”  
She stepped out of her clothes, and Hansel marveled at the unlined expanse of her skin. Gretel was marked all over, from the nape of her neck to a curving scar around her left ankle. But he liked that about her. His sister’s back told their story.

Mina turned around and the full frontal exposure of her breasts had Hansel reconsidering his intention to decline her obvious offer. Gretel was a big girl. A bad ass one. Scarier than most things in these woods, right? Right. Hansel wasn't convinced. He stepped toward Mina anyway. “Healing waters?”

Mina’s response was interrupted by a shout that rang through the trees. “Hansel!”

“Gretel!” Hansel whirled, snatched up his clothes and gun. Mina panted behind him, shuffling back into her dress. Hansel didn’t have time to be disappointed. 

“Gretel!” he called again, and took off toward the sound of his sister’s yell. Mina would either catch up with him or she wouldn’t.

Gretel hadn’t called back to him. Hansel sped up. He’d heard her. She was near. If she wasn’t responding, then she probably needed back up. God, he hoped she wasn’t trying to take on a witch herself. Last time she’d done that, they’d ended up having to stay a whole winter in a shit-hole of an inn waiting for her to mend. Watching that particular witch go up in flames had been one of the more satisfying moments in Hansel’s life.

Hansel abandoned any attempts at stealth and broke into a full on sprint. He ducked around and dodged the branches that whipped past his face, and slowly he started to pick up the sound of voices. He got closer and it was men. Only men. Men Gretel could handle. Had done so since she was fifteen. Hansel slowed, relieved. Until there came the squelching thud of a kick and a pained groan that was his third least favorite sound in the whole world.

He whipped his gun from his back and broke through the tree line into a clearing. The first of the men in the circle only had time for a surprised shout before Hansel blew a hole right through his chest. The second wasn't so lucky; he lost the entire top half of his head. Led by the bitch-ass Sheriff, the rest of the group turned and ran. 

Gretel blinked up at him from the middle of what had been their group. “Get them,” she wheezed, and he was more than willing to oblige. Hansel shot the remaining two lackeys, watched them drop to the ground, one not quite dead, breath and blood still bubbling from his lips. Frothy blood, a lung hit. Good. It would take a long, painful bit for him to die. 

Hansel paused. Inhaled. Aimed at the retreating Sheriff. Exhaled and pulled the trigger. His target fell at the far edge of the clearing, shredding the air with a sharp wail.

Hansel crunched through the dry, autumn grass until he came to the fallen man’s side. He nodded. “Sheriff.”

The man snarled up at him, still attempting condescension. Though his ruined nose and kneecap spoiled the effect. And the roiling panic in his eye. Oh, the panic. That was Hansel’s favorite part.

Hansel smiled at him, showed more teeth than necessary. A smart man would have kept silent. But the Sheriff was the type of man who burned pretty women for the crime of being, well, pretty and women, so instead he spoke. “Fuck you,” he spat. “And your whore. Do you take a turn when she’s done with everyone else?”

Hansel especially hated that line of insult. Gretel was, oddly enough, purer than most of the so-called maidens that they ran into on their travels. Not that it mattered to him if she were, y’know untouched or not, just that it rubbed at some raw place inside of him to hear such insinuations against her. That was all. 

Hansel shifted his weight and delivered the sheriff a walloping kick. The sheriff screamed, and Hansel kicked him again, pleased with the solid connection between his foot and the idiot’s side. The sheriff began to sob, and hearing it only made Hansel happier. He kicked the damned asshole twice more before he heard his name called from behind him.

“Hansel,” said Gretel, sounding very much like she was using up the last of her strength, “fucking kill him already.”

Hansel shrugged, pointed his gun at the man curled near his feet, and turned his head into a blood-and-pulp filled crater in the earth. Then the witch hunter spat and ran to Gretel. It had only taken two or three minutes to dispatch her attackers, but he felt almost remiss that he’d taken extra time with the piss-poor excuse for a lawman instead of killing him clean and going to his sister.

Hard ground met Hansel’s knees as he plummeted to them at Gretel’s side. He rolled her from her stomach to her back, carefully, gently. His insides flipped when he saw her face, a chunk carved out of one cheek and everything covered in blood from the gash across her forehead. Oh shit. And he’d been about to waste time splashing around with Mina while his sister was out here getting killed. By men. Motherfucking mortal men.

Hansel snapped his head up. The healing waters. Maybe Mina had been having a laugh with him, but he didn’t think so. At any rate, getting Gretel cleaned up could only help. Moving with a barely contained franticness, Hansel lifted his sister in a rescuer’s carry, grunting with the effort. If only she’d stayed small or he’d gotten bigger. Carrying the dead weight of someone nearly his size wasn’t going to be easy. He staggered back into the cover of the trees, following the signs of his earlier headlong rush. The pool was nearby. It had to be.

Mina ran into them before they’d gotten very far. She took one look at the mangled curve of Gretel’s face and went an even paler shade of white. “The sheriff. He has done this?”

Gretel moaned, her head heavy against her brother’s shoulder. Hansel didn’t stop. “That pool. It heals, right?”

Mina fell into hovering step beside him. “Yes,” she said. “But you can carry her all the way there? Just stop, I will help.”

“No,” said Hansel. “I need some fucking magic. You go. Run to town. Warn them to stay inside, say their sheriff has been cut down by a witch.”

"Stubborn man." Mina’s hands fluttered at the edge of Hansel’s vision, and she spoke something low and indecipherable. "Rub the salt from the ledge under the waterfall onto her hurts.”

Hansel nodded, kept going. Mina sighed, and stepped in front of him, forcing him to halt. “For luck,” she said, and pushed up on her toes to press her lips against him. Hansel didn’t respond, and she stepped away with a small, sad smile. Mina turned and ran from him without a further word. 

The witch hunter pulled a face, disregarded the tingling in his lips, and took off down his trail. The going was suddenly a lot easier. He didn’t feel as tired and Gretel was lighter in his arms. Adrenalin kicking in. Had to be. About fucking time.

They drew up on the pool at a quick clip, and Hansel skidded to a stop at its rocky edge. He laid Gretel down, smoothly like Mother had taught him when his sister was a new baby, and stripped himself of the heavier parts of his outfit: the guns, the knives, the leather overcoat, belt, and boots. Gretel gave a feeble twitch, and he reevaluated his plan to leave her out of the water while he swam over to the salt ledges. Magic healing had funny rules. Maybe it would be better if she were in the water too. The rock lining of the pool formed a shallow ledge on one side, he could prop her there.

Thus decided, Hansel turned to his sister, pulled off her boots in a practiced move, divested her of her own leather, and slit her outer corset strings in one smooth cut. They were as ready for the water as they were going to get. 

Hansel picked Gretel back up, though she was heavy again, and gingerly stepped into the pool. Right off, he could feel that Mina hadn’t been lying. There was a thrumming pulse to the movement of the water, reminiscent of the way a witch’s presence felt, but different. Like their power, but without the wrongness. Hansel stooped to settle Gretel into a likely-looking rock crevice. He eased her into the water, not wanting too much temperature change to shock her. 

When she was in up to her chest, Gretel gave a great gasp and her eyes opened wide. “Hansel,” she breathed, her eyes on his face but unfocused.

“Hang on,” he said, wedged her firmly into the rocks. “We need one more thing.”

With wary steps, Hansel edged his way along the rocks, treading when he couldn’t find a foothold, until he reached the waterfall on the opposite side of the pool. The ledge above his head was thick with salt like Mina said. Hansel fought his way out of his wet shirt, only dunking himself once, and used the fabric as a makeshift bag, scraping the mineral grains into it. Gretel was crying, his second least favorite sound in the world, and he hurriedly retraced his path, got to her in record time.

“Hey,” he said, wiping away the shining tracks on her face, “stop that. There’s no crying in witch hunting.”

Gretel’s wide eyes found his and he could see her trying to concentrate in her fog of pain. Hansel told her not to hurt herself, and began to smooth the salt onto her torn cheek, the dislocated peak of her nose, the wicked cut on her forehead. Nearly her whole face was masked with the gritty stuff by the time he’d gotten everything that he could see there. But she’d been kicked. Her breathing wasn’t good. He had to look at her middle. 

“Alleyoop.” He grabbed her underarms and dragged her to edge. Her quiet crying spiked again when her top half left the water, so Hansel left her legs bent and dangling into the pool. 

He settled himself astride Gretel’s hips, kept his own toes in the water, just in case he needed to complete the circuit or some other mumbo jumbo bullshit, and slid Gretel’s stained, lawn shirt up her torso. He didn’t know if this was more or less awkward than it was when she was awake. Just a body, he told himself firmly, sensibly, my sister, so not awkward either way. He saw the swell of the bottom of her breasts and left the fabric there. Not that it was hiding much of anything, being white and wet. Not that there was anything for him to notice. Not the change of shade of Gretel’s skin as it moved from her breasts to her areolas, not the protruding peaks of said areolas, not the intriguing swoop from the crest of her collar bones to the rise of her chest. None of it. 

Hansel clasped his hands together, breathed in deep. There was only his Gretel and the blanket of bruises across her torso. Work for him to do. There was a crescent cut at the bottom of her ribs, shallow on the ends, but deep enough to show bone at the middle. Hansel hissed, packed it with salt, wished he could kill the fucking sheriff all over again. He set about dabbing the salt onto each and every cut he saw, no matter how small, until he was really just trailing his hands along Gretel’s skin. She was a map, a tracing, the way of them. 

He bent over her, rested his forehead against the uninjured part of hers. “Wake the fuck up,” he whispered, kissed the corner of her lips. He sat up and dragged a hand over his face. Maybe he should have let Mina stay.

Without warning Gretel arched, nearly toppling Hansel into the water when her pelvis pushed against his. “Whoa” he said, and instinctively wrapped his arms around her. Gretel relaxed, all of the tension leaving her body in a great rush. She fluttered her eyes and looked at her brother. Finally, he thought, it’s her.  
Gretel brushed her fingers along Hansel’s face, her hands not as sure as they always were. “Are we dead?”

He rolled his eyes at her. “Being soaked and half pickled with salt is your idea of the afterlife?”

The hand on his jaw moved to the back of his neck, rubbed against the scar there that matched her own. Hook witch. “Guess not,” Gretel said, and shook him a little. “Magic pond in the woods, eh? Let’s wash off and get to town before night.”

Sighing only a very little, Hansel untangled his arms from his sister and sat back. He pulled himself up and out of the water, and gave her a hand up too. Gretel raised her eyebrows as the rolled up state of her shirt, but didn’t say anything. Hansel had a totally unreasonable urge to offer a defense of her undress, but Gretel pulled her shirt all of the way off and stopped him dead. She shimmied out of her pants and smiled at Hansel as she shook out what was left of her braid. “Don’t you want to get that off?” She gestured to the scarlet stains on his hands. “It’s unbearable when your fucking blood gets on me.”

Hansel tried to look at anything besides the dark waves of her hair or the almost dappled pattern on her back. Damn her lack of self-consciousness. “You’re lucky I got in that water long enough to get the hocus-pocus shit for you.”

Gretel just laughed and ran at him, the coil and release of her muscles transfixing, mesmerizing. She threw herself around her brother. “You’re coming with me clothes and all.” 

She dragged Hansel to the side of the pool and he didn’t put up more than a token fight. Friction was not his friend. Not his friend. Not his friend. Hansel repeated it mantra-like in his mind.

“Don’t worry,” Gretel said, poised on the stone bank. She put her lips to their clasped hand. “I won’t let you drown,” she said. "I promise." Then she jumped, pulling him behind her.

They surfaced, spluttering on Hansel’s part and laughing on Gretel’s. The salts had washed away, revealing her wounds to be mostly healed, and her bruises faded. Hansel bobbed in the water as Gretel ran a wondering hand along her face. Her fingers stuttered on a shiny patch of new skin on her cheek. “You blew his fucking head off, yeah?”

Hansel rolled his eyes, glad Gretel could not see him curl his hands into fists under the water. “As you wished.”

Gretel smiled at him, and the reflected afternoon light highlighted her shoulders, shimmered in her eyes. “I love you, Brother,” she said.

And Hansel laughed at that, his simultaneous number one favorite and number one least favorite sound in the world. He sent a giant splash of water her way, hiding her beautiful, trusting face. “You have no idea,” he said, wishing he could be one of the birds flying free around them. “None.”


End file.
